Star Wars The Force Awakens Trailer: First Impressions
From most of the feedback I’ve seen on my Twitter feed, if you’re a Star Wars fan then you must have loved the new The Force Awakens trailer and if you didn’t, you’re just a hater and your opinion doesn’t count.
Maybe it’s not that black and white, but it feels that way. I should start by saying that I didn’t dislike the trailer but I wasn’t blown away by it. This was billed as a teaser and not a full trailer which seems to be a cop out. It’s an excuse for the powers that be not to show us anything of substance. Yes we saw two of the new actors, John Boyega and Daisy Ridley, and yes we got a look at the new Stormtrooper armor and let’s not forget that new lightsaber, which, apparently, even some Star Wars fans thought was too much.
But what we saw was all stuff we’ve seen before. A guy in armor pops up in a desert? “Look sir, droids.”
When Daisy rides off across the desert on her speeder; flashes of Anakin from Attack of the Clones as he searches for his mother. The Stormtroopers on the ship? How about watching the Clone Troopers walk up the ramps into the landing ships, also in AOTC?
Closeup of the pilot and then the X-Wings racing across a lake? Replace them with Snowspeeders during the opening battle of The Empire Strikes Back. There are already comparison shots of the X-wing pilot and Christopher Malcolm as Zev in his Snowspeeder from TESB circulating.
The Millennium Falcon looping over the desert and attacking two TIE Fighters? No TIE Fighters but it pulls a similar stunt on the way back to Bespin to pick up an wounded Luke Skywalker.
The final scene with the Sith, or presumed Sith, walking through the woods and ignighting that lightsaber we’ve never seen before? Drop the woods but it’s still reminiscent of the first time we saw Darth Maul ignite his double-bladed lightsaber in The Phantom Menace.
It’s even John Williams music scoring the whole thing. Is it “new?” Yes. But it’s also more of the same. It doesn’t tell us anything about the plot, who the characters actually are or even really tease us that’s it’s not going to, in some way, be something we’ve seen before.
Could I be judging it too harshly? Possibly. But I wanted at least one thing to jump out and grab my attention like previous trailers have and this didn’t have that moment. I think the new droid looks fun and I’m interested to know the story behind the lightsaber wielding character but I need to see more to really get excited.